Patrick spoke slowly, looking at the ground, remembering. ‘The shed had a dirt floor, and there was a little bit of light coming in, through the roof.’
Moy waited, silently.
‘I could hear pigs.’
Scraps of information. Moy willed the boy to speak, to say something specific, to pinpoint the geography.
‘I remember, I moved close to Tom and asked him what he thought the man had done to Mum.’
‘And what did Tom say?’
‘He said she’d be okay. I said, but he hit her. He just told me to be quiet.’
There was a short pause. ‘What was in the shed?’ Moy asked.
‘Bags…grain, fertiliser. Shovels and spades in an old chest. I crawled to the door and pushed it but it was locked. So I went back to Tom and he said, we’ve gotta get out.’
Moy and George were watching the boy.
‘So it was my fault.’ And he looked at Moy. ‘My fault we haven’t found him…that he’s…’
‘What?’ Moy asked.
‘Dead. That he’s dead. That everyone’s dead—Mum, Tom—that everyone’s…’ He trailed off. George put his hand over the boy’s, held it, squeezed it, and felt the plastic shape.
‘The more you tell me…’ Moy continued.
‘I have.’
‘Like where you’re from, and why you came here.’
Patrick reclaimed his hand.
‘There’s a lot of missing information,’ Moy continued. ‘The Barnes family is a mystery. But you, you could tell me why.’
‘I shouldn’t have run off,’ Patrick repeated. ‘Tom told me to. I didn’t know what to do, I just kept running. And when I went back, later, he wasn’t there.’
‘The shed?’
‘Yes, on the farm, with the pigs. See, he came to get Tom, because I ran away. He warned me…I should’ve…’ He looked up. ‘That’s when I came back to town…’
Patrick stood up and bolted, knocking over his chair as he ran from the room. Moy looked out of the window and saw him going into the shed.
‘What’s all that about?’ George asked.
‘I’m sick of waiting.’
George moved in his chair, shook his head and sighed. ‘I just about had him talking.’
‘What?’
‘Why his dad didn’t come with them, when they came here.’ He plugged in the transformer, connected the wires to the contacts, switched it on and listened as it buzzed. ‘Thirty years…sounds like new.’
‘He didn’t say?’
‘No.’
George carefully lowered one of the locomotives onto the track.
‘I thought if I made him face up to it,’ Moy said.
‘I think you were right before. You’re just gonna muck him up even more.’ He adjusted the current and the loco moved off. ‘Look at that.’
‘Great.’
‘Go out and see him. Tell him the train’s workin’.’
Moy followed the loco’s progress around the tracks. It jumped and almost came off at a bad join. But then kept going. ‘Used to seem bigger,’ he said.
‘Go on.’
Moy went out, across the yard of fat hen and wild radish, into the dark shed. He looked at Patrick. ‘You okay?’
No reply.
‘George has got your train going.’
The boy looked up. ‘I know.’
‘Come and have a look.’
Patrick sat, undecided.
‘I’ve done it again,’ Moy said.
Patrick wiped his nose on the back of his hand and said, ‘What?’
‘You know…misjudged.’
‘What?’
‘My…parenting skills.’
Patrick scowled at the choice of words, but let it go. ‘I can’t look you up on a computer,’ he said.
‘I know.’
They could hear the buzz of the loco from inside the house. Patrick smiled. ‘He wanted to do it.’
‘Yeah, nothing changes. Like when he first put it together… There’s me: Dad, can I have a go?
In a minute, son, I gotta make sure it works
.’
Patrick laughed.
‘
Yer muck around, it’ll just blow up
. And me:
Dad
…?’
‘
Dad?
’ Patrick sang.
‘
Dad, can I have a go?
’
‘
Shut up, son
.’
‘
Y’muck around, it’ll just blow up
.’
And from inside the house: ‘You two comin’ in or not?’
As they both tried to stop laughing.
33
AGAIN. ONE, TWO, three a.m. Hours of rolling from side to side, face down, sweating. Eyelids clenched. Face sore with the effort. Rug between his knees, no rug, window open, closed. Nothing. Just a clear, waking mind, and Charlie, buried at the bottom of the bed-sheets.
Come out, he said. I gotta make the bed.
Charlie, Megan echoed, coming into the room. I’ve got to leave in seven minutes and you’re still in your jarmas. Turning her gaze to Moy. He’s still in his pyjamas.
I know, dear, I’m trying.
Charlie, she shouted. Now! She removed his sheets. What happens if you’re late?
Charlie sat up. I don’t want to go.
You’re going. Fiddling with a pearl earring.
It’s boring.
So what?
Can’t I stay home?
Who’s gonna look after you?
He looked at his father.
I’ve got an afternoon shift, Moy said.
Till then?
No.
Till lunch?
No, Megan added, putting her hair in a tie. Now, get your stuff.
Charlie kept looking at his dad.
Well, maybe a few hours, Moy said.
Megan looked at him. He’s booked in for the day. We’ve still got to pay.
I know, but just for a few hours.
She shook her head. Fuck.
What?
After she was gone, Charlie sat on the lounge eating chips, kicking his feet in the beanbag and smiling. Thanks, Dad.
Eleven o’ clock, okay?
Twelve? Lunch? We can make omelettes.
Moy stood looking out the window. He studied the paling fence, coming away from its frame, hanging as if just about to fall, although it had been that way for years. The shed door moving in the breeze, catching in the grass. Walking out to the dining-lounge, he sat in George’s chair. An old recliner; the foot-rest broken years ago. It was covered with a towel that smelt of old farts.
After sitting for a few moments he said, ‘What’s the point?’
He stood up, walked into the laundry, found the spray-on cleaner and went into the bathroom. Then he set to the toilet, cleaning the bowl with a shit-flecked brush, wetting the sponge and wiping every square inch of ceramic. He flushed. Exchanged the sponge for a new one and started on the sink.
George stormed out of his room. ‘What are you doing?’
‘What’s it look like?’
‘You woke me.’ He stopped, staring. ‘I’m not gonna have this shit going on.’
‘Sorry.’
‘You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have yer?’
‘What?’
‘This is my place.’
Moy’s fingers were on the trigger of the spray bottle. ‘
Our
place,’ he said.
‘Bullshit…mine.’
‘If it’s yours, you clean it, buy your own food, drive yourself to the doctor.’
‘Been doin’ it for fifty years.’
‘Don’t,’ Patrick said, coming out of his room.
‘You’ll turn this into a nursing home,’ George shouted.
‘George,’ Patrick insisted.
‘Keep out of it.’
‘You don’t want a nursing home?’ Moy asked. ‘You want a hovel, you want—’
‘I don’t care about—’
‘Stop!’ Patrick called, stepping between them.
There was a short pause. ‘You two argue about everything. It’s not like anything’s that bad, is it?’
They both looked at him.
‘It’s not like anyone’s…gone.’
‘What’s it…four-twenty?’ George asked his son.
‘I couldn’t sleep.’
He shook his head and returned to his room. Moy looked at the boy. ‘It’s either this or stare at the ceiling.’
Patrick left him alone, stripped back to a few basic fears, confused about how he should carry on. Eventually he stood, went into the kitchen and made a coffee. Returning to his room, he sat down and started working. A flick of his hand and the coffee tumbled, spilling over a pile of manila folders containing reports and photos, statements and marked-up maps. Some of it flowed under the keyboard, and over the edge of the plank onto the carpet.
‘Shit,’ he said, standing, feeling the coffee on his legs. Darting into the bathroom, he grabbed a couple of towels and started blotting up around his improvised desk.
There was no space on his bedroom floor so he went into the hallway. He opened the folders and, one by one, took out the sheets, dried them off and lined them up on the floor. After he’d done about a dozen documents, Patrick appeared. ‘Can I help?’
‘Could you keep doing this? Most of them are just wet around the edges. It won’t take long.’
He returned to his bedroom, finished cleaning up and got dressed. Then he heard the boy take a sharp breath. There was silence, small feet running down the hallway, the fly-door slamming. He went into the hall and stood looking at the sheets of paper, some already dry, scalloped around the edges. One was sitting by itself in the middle of the hallway. Picking it up, he looked at the face of the man who’d washed up at Mangrove Point.
He folded the sheet in half, walked down the hall and from the house. ‘Patrick?’ he called, as he stood on the porch.
No reply.
‘Patrick?’
He noticed the shed door was ajar. Jumping down he walked slowly through the ankle-high grass. ‘Patrick?’ He went inside, climbed over a fallen bike and stood staring into the corner. ‘You okay?’
The boy had finished crying but was taking long, difficult breaths.
‘Watch for spiders,’ said Moy. ‘You still upset?’
‘No.’
‘I wondered what had happened.’
‘Nothing’s happened.’
He sat beside him. The iron bit into his back so he leaned forward, took the folded sheet and opened it out. ‘Maybe you know this fella?’
Patrick studied the face. ‘No.’
‘You sure?’
He grabbed the sheet, screwed it up and threw it across the shed. Moy just waited, looking at him.
‘What?’ Patrick asked.
‘Should I leave you alone?’
Shed silence. Objects still, rusted and gathering dust. No breeze. Warm air rising, encountering the roof and turning down in a kero-scented convection. Patrick said, ‘He was the man who came to our house.’
‘When was that?’
‘That morning.’
‘The day of the fire?’
Patrick stretched out his legs and sat back. ‘He came back, and me and Tom had to run.’
He told Moy about the figure in the hallway, the pushing and shoving.
‘It was him.’ He pointed to the piece of paper. ‘He was shouting at Mum, and Mum was shouting back, and Tom tried to help.’ He stopped, staring at the floor.
‘I bet you were scared. This fella…he was violent?’
‘He hit her, and she fell over, and her head…I screamed at him, I said, leave us alone, but he just stood there, looking at me.’
‘And what about Tom?’
‘He was sitting on the floor.’ He looked at Moy pleadingly. ‘The man…I hit him but he just pushed me away and I fell down too. Then he knelt down, looking at Mum.’
‘Like he was checking if she was okay?’
‘He kept feeling her neck and her hands.’
‘What, her pulse maybe?’ Moy asked, holding his wrist.
‘I think…perhaps. Then he stood up and looked at us, like he was angry. Tom said, you better not have hurt her, and he just shouted, shut up, like that, over and over.’
There was a long pause as the boy got his breath.
George came out onto the porch and called, ‘Bart, where are you?’
Moy waited, then heard his father go back inside.
‘He was angry, Bart. I thought he was going to…Then Tom said, run, and we both stood up and ran out of the house. He came after us but he wasn’t that fast. We went into the bush and just kept running until we couldn’t go any further. So we stopped…’
Moy was waiting patiently. ‘So you ran all the way to town?’
No reply.
‘This must have been early?’
‘It was. We were running through the bush and it was hard to see but Tom knew the path really well.’
‘So you made it to the laneway?’
Nothing.
Moy shrugged. ‘That’s enough for now, eh?’
Patrick just looked at him. ‘We were so scared she might not get up.’
34
MOY WENT DOWN to Mango Meats but Justin Davids was off on a delivery, so to fill the time he worked the shops again. He walked down Ayr Street, stopping to look in store windows. The Guilderton Retravision had 42-inch plasmas, surround sound, near cost, easy finance. One was showing an old black-and-white movie: a boat load of survivors floating in the Atlantic, as the radio operator, eyes ablaze, told the captain he hadn’t had time to put out an SOS.
Must go, he thought, pulling himself away from the window, wanting to see how it ended. They would be saved, he guessed, but not before the most problematic passengers were strangled or drowned. Then there would be room for the other survivors. Neat, simple justice. The sort that always seemed to elude him.
He went into the store, talked to the manager and soon the mystery man’s face, complete with pollen-crusted eyebrows and reef-shredded cheeks, was doing a circuit of the white goods showroom.
No one had seen him before. An old woman, visiting from Fortescue, claimed he looked like her daughter’s ex-boyfriend but that, she explained, was twenty years ago. The accounts clerk had seen him somewhere, perhaps the IGA, perhaps playing for the Guilderton Maulers, but then said no, I’m thinking of someone else.
He tried Webb’s Tyres and the Commercial Hotel before returning to Mango Meats. ‘Is Justin back?’ he asked a young man, busy making sausages.
‘Justin,’ the lanky teenager called, before turning to Moy and asking, ‘You’re that detective?’
‘Yes, that detective. You’re new?’
‘Ray Foster. The new apprentice. I would shake your hand.’ He showed him his meaty hands.
Justin Davids appeared from the cool-room. ‘Sorry I was out.’ He opened the display cabinet and placed a tray of premium mince at the front.
‘You look busy,’ Moy said.
‘So-so. Got your man yet?’
Moy produced the photo of the Mangrove Point body and placed it on the counter. Davids took a moment before looking up. ‘That’s him,’ he said.
‘You sure?’
He squinted and tilted his head. ‘I reckon. Stood there lookin’ at him. What happened to him?’